Hacker News Reader

darthoctopuson The fall of Labubus and the mush of modern internet trends

Indeed, I find it very hard to take the article seriously given that every one of the notionally decentralised trends it's described has propagated on a very small handful of highly centralised platforms. For that matter, it's very difficult for me to imagine how these trends might have spread in the first place without access to large-audience virality directed by algorithmic recommendations precisely enabled by such severe centralisation.

darthoctopuson Replacement.ai

that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence. the entire history of technology is also powerful business interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns…

darthoctopuson In Praise of Idleness (1932)

> Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. These are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might, therefore, be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is rendered possible only by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.

Ahhh, how times have changed indeed!

darthoctopuson We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

perhaps read the actual first paragraph of the article? the whole point of it is that, whether we call it that or not, our privately run reputation scores (including but not limited to credit scores) functionally are social credit scores --- except we've been boiled frogs, and should take some time for self-reflection before engaging in knee-jerk reactions to China's other failings (which I'm not denying btw) whenever social credit is brought up.

darthoctopuson We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

Did you even read the article? Here is the situation in China:

> Here's what's actually happening. As of 2024, there's still no nationwide social credit score in China. Most private scoring systems have been shut down, and local government pilots have largely ended. It’s mainly a fragmented collection of regulatory compliance tools, mostly focused on financial behavior and business oversight. While well over 33 million businesses have been scored under corporate social credit systems, individual scoring remains limited to small pilot cities like Rongcheng. Even there, scoring systems have had "very limited impact" since they've never been elevated to provincial or national levels.

Compare that to the situation with, say, credit scores in the US --- wholly run by an oligopoly of three private companies, but fully ingrained into how personal finances work here. At least a publicly run credit score would be held accountable, however indirectly, to voters and the law; and its safety might be treated as a matter of national security, rather than having Equifax and Experian leaking data like clockwork.

darthoctopuson Apple announces American Manufacturing Program

that is the point --- precisely because the usual mechanisms of enforcement do not apply, there will be no accountability for Apple.

darthoctopuson Show HN: Mathpad – Physical keypad for typing math symbols

As an intermediate alternative between a hardware keyboard and a graphical symbol picker, I use an .XCompose file with contents that look like this:

    # GREEK
    <Multi_key> <g> <A>    : "Α"   U0391    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA
    <Multi_key> <g> <a>    : "α"   U03B1    # GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
    <Multi_key> <g> <B>    : "Β"   U0392    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA
    <Multi_key> <g> <b>    : "β"   U03B2    # GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA
    <Multi_key> <g> <D>    : "Δ"   U0394    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA
    <Multi_key> <g> <d>    : "δ"   U03B4    # GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA
    <Multi_key> <g> <E>    : "Ε"   U0395    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON
    <Multi_key> <g> <e>    : "ε"   U03B5    # GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON

    ...

    # Math Symbols
    <Multi_key> <i> <n>    : "∈"   U2208 # IN
    <Multi_key> <f> <a>    : "∀"   U2200 # FOR ALL
    <Multi_key> <t> <e>    : "∃"   U2203 # THERE EXISTS
    <Multi_key> <a> <n> <d>    : "∧"   U2227 # AND
    <Multi_key> <o> <r>    : "∨"   U2228 # OR
    <Multi_key> <less> <parenleft>  : "⟨" U27E8     # MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <greater> <parenright>: "⟩" U27E9   # MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <d> <d>    : "∂" U8706 # DEL
    <Multi_key> <n> <b>    : "∇" U8711 # NABLA

I've used this for perhaps the last 10 years now and I don't think I could go back to working on a machine without configurable compose key functionality at this point.

darthoctopuson World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

why is this downvoted? the specific cities (notably in Arizona) that have taken deliberate action on this are exceptions proving the general rule that light pollution is demonstrably less of a policy concern even compared to the notorious American disdain for walkable infrastructure.

darthoctopuson This open problem taught me what topology is [video]

this is not a conclusion that he jumps to! all that is stated is that there is a mapping from every pair of points on a curve to a set of 3D coordinates specified by their midpoints and distances. there is no requirement for uniqueness here. in fact, the whole point of this is to turn the search for an inscribed rectangle into the search for two pairs of points on the curve that have the same midpoint and distance --- this is stated just 1 min 15 seconds after the timestamp that you point out.

darthoctopuson U.S. math scores drop on major international test

given the audience here, there's almost certainly an element of denial of complicity in this

darthoctopuson Paraguay Loves Mickey, the Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn't

This is valid (if somewhat obscure) notation for decimal dates in particular, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

darthoctopuson Six Degrees of Reform UK – Mapping the UK's Entrepreneurial Far Right

There's healthy skepticism about vaccine side effects, and then there are these antics:

> On 11 January 2023, Bridgen had the Conservative whip suspended after tweeting about COVID-19 vaccines: "As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust." Bridgen claimed the tweet had been moderated by staff members, which was denied by a Conservative Party spokesman.[84] Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the comparison "utterly unacceptable".[5] Two days later, Bridgen issued a statement saying his tweet was not antisemitic, and apologised "for any offence caused". He said he was taking legal advice about action against those who had labelled him as antisemitic. Bridgen further contended that he asked "reasonable questions" about the side-effects of mRNA vaccines, and had "received huge support from ordinary people, medical workers [and] those who have experienced vaccine harms themselves".[85]

> In March 2023, Bridgen posted tweets promoting a conspiracy theory claiming that COVID-19 originated at Fort Detrick.[86]

> On 29 February 2024, Bridgen referenced capital punishment as an appropriate response to "crimes against humanity" regarding the vaccine rollout.[87]

darthoctopuson Unschooling Is the Parenting Trend That's Pissing Everyone Off

is pissing certain people off your primary consideration in deciding how you educate your kids?

darthoctopuson Act on Press

thanks for the script!

darthoctopuson AlphaFold3 – why did Nature publish it without its code?

> The private sector funds most global research and development, and many of the results of such work are not published in peer-reviewed journals. We at Nature think it’s important that journals engage with the private sector and work with its scientists so they can submit their research for peer review and publication … But this goal will not be achieved in a single step. It will require a process. And that requires engagement and dialogue between all stakeholders.

I can understand this line of reasoning if the researchers involved needed convincing to publish their results in peer-reviewed journals at all. But this is Nature we're talking about, and more likely than not I imagine the incentives work the other way around. As it stands, the AlphaFold team gets to use a Nature publication to lend their work the veneer of prestige and credibility, without actually being held to the same standards of openness that are demanded of us ordinary mortals. As far as I can tell the uproar is about this specific double standard, and to the extent that this editorial doesn't really address this, I think it misses the point.

darthoctopuson Greener cities: A necessity or a luxury?

Why not both? Green spaces and buildings are necessities insofar as they provide important amenities for mental health, pollution/heat island management, and placemaking, and in this sense they are critical infrastructure. But many cities, even big ones, operate at scale without investing in important infrastructure, such as public transport, traffic engineering, third places, and affordable housing; it is unsurprising that the operators of such cities should see green spaces as luxuries in a similar fashion.

darthoctopuson Let me clear a huge misunderstanding

The "representation" in "representation theory" that the wikipedia article refers to is a term of art, referring to a class of one-to-one maps between groups (sets endowed with a binary operation with specific properties) and square matrices, in such a way that matrix multiplication preserves the properties of this binary operation between the original group elements being mapped to matrices. There is no mention of this sort of algebraic operation whatsoever in the paper you have linked, which, as far as I can tell, uses the word "representation" only in a nontechnical descriptive sense. I believe you might be misunderstanding the nature of this breakthrough.

darthoctopuson Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

> Fears that the experiment would engender laziness in participants were not borne out in the project’s findings: “The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings,” the chief data analyst of one of the experiments said. “There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.”

darthoctopuson Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)

[2021]

darthoctopuson EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not income

about time

darthoctopuson Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

how is this substantially different from the current situation, where people are able to simply purchase influence? At least banning paid lobbying has the advantage of forcing the wealthy to spend time rather than money. Everyone has only 24 hours a day.

darthoctopuson Hubble’s Hitchcock Moment: An Explosion in Unexpected Place

Nope, you're not imagining things. The article actually quite wrong here: kilonovae are so named because they yield ~1000 times the peak luminosity of classical novae (~1e8 Lsun vs ~1e5 Lsun), not supernovae. For that matter, supernovae are themselves also named that way because their peak luminosities far exceed that of classical novae (with the most luminous recorded being >1e11 Lsun). I am not an expert on magnetar mergers in particular but according to the MNRAS paper that is cited, the transient in question, AT 2023fhn, gave a peak luminosity of about 4e8 Lsun (under certain assumptions about wavelength dependence, distance, etc) --- nowhere near supernova territory. Notably, the paper doesn't actually make the same claim about magnetars that the HN-posted article does.

darthoctopuson U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $8T

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...

> It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.

> “The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.

> Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.

> But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

> “The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.

darthoctopuson X.org Hit by New Security Vulnerabilities – Two Date Back to 1988 with X11R2

Not OP, but right now my biggest unfulfilled use cases are:

- global keybindings (e.g. I would like variations on super+space with extra modifiers to trigger different behaviours in an application launcher, Kupfer)

- remote control (x2x) --- I use this for essentially seamless kvm between different machines driving adjacent monitors

- I have no choice but to use Zoom screen sharing for work

darthoctopuson Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco

read the article. literally the first few paragraphs:

> In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired the major food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco, allowing tobacco firms to dominate America’s food supply and reap billions in sales from popular brands such as Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Lunchables.

> The new research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them. The Addiction study found that in the decades when the tobacco giants owned the world’s leading food companies, the foods that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies.

it is difficult to argue that they were simply unfortunate to happen to produce one class of unhealthy products when the same companies proceeded to then move on to an entirely different product class, and somehow also engineer products to also be maximally addictive and, as it turns out, unhealthy.

darthoctopuson A Harvard professor became the world’s leading alien hunter

anecdata, but at least in my grad school astro department (which will go unnamed) this kind of bullying behaviour would be, and actually was, called out and ostracised, rather than rewarded! granted, it took a whole year for the university to get its act together and do something about it…

darthoctopuson A Harvard professor became the world’s leading alien hunter

Not mentioned in the article, but pretty widely circulated in the astronomy community when it happened, is Avi's utterly disrespectful and frankly uncalled for vituperation onto Jill Tarter in response to her public criticism of his (self-demonstrating) Messiah complex: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/02/16/watc...

For those out of the loop, Jill Tarter is a SETI legend, who has dedicated her life's work to a principled search for extraterrestrial life, of exactly the kind that Avi has claimed to have been neglected by the scientific community (to obviously self-aggrandising effect). The arrogance here is just astounding. This man is a toxic and hypocritical bully, and this bad behaviour should not be rewarded even if he were correct (which, as the article describes, appears unlikely).

darthoctopuson The Matrix Cookbook (2012) [pdf]

previous discussion of these problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30895307

> The real problem is the Numerical Recipes license, which is extremely restrictive - probably more so than most users realize. I won't dignify it with a link, but you can find licensing terms on their website. NR routines are copyrighted (fine) and cannot be redistributed as source (annoying but not uncommon for COMMERCIAL software, somewhat unusual for scientific software). There is no exception for noncommercial or scientific use, which is Grinchy and irritating, especially given that two of the authors acknowledge funding from the NSF for work on numerical methods. Beyond that, the single-CPU/single-screen terms of their license are almost impossible for a working scientist to comply with, especially in a networked environment.

darthoctopuson It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds

it is for precisely not resorting to these dirty tactics that ProPublica is considered the gold standard.

darthoctopuson It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds

should there be a statute of limitations on ecological catastrophe? that seems like it would strongly, and perversely, incentivise cover-ups and other nefarious weaponisations of information asymmetry against the interests of the commons.